TOKYO--According to those who have been able to get their hands on early copies of the popular manga weekly Shonen Jump, a game called Jump Super Stars has been revealed to be in development for the Nintendo DS. Although the game's genre is not yet known, it will feature a cast of characters culled from the pages of the magazine, including the eponymous hero of the popular Naruto series.

This type of game is not unprecedented, although the last such release was well over a decade ago. Famicom Jump: Eiyuu Retsuden (1989) and Famicom Jump II: Saikyou no Shichi-nin (1991) were released by Bandai for the Nintendo Famicom (NES). Both were role-playing games; neither was released outside of Japan.

As Japan's most popular weekly manga magazine, Shonen Jump is famous for its record high shipment of 6.53 million issues one week in 1994. Sales have dropped considerably since then, although it kept up a circulation of 3.24 million throughout 2002. The average manga weekly in Japan ships around one million issues.

Although it is aimed at young boys, Shonen Jump is also read by many adults in Japan. Shonen Jump is one of the few remaining bargains in Japan; at 230 yen ($2), readers get about 400 pages of manga across 18 different series. Many of the popular manga titles that have made their way to the gaming world, such as Dragon Ball, Rurouni Kenshin, Yu-Gi-Oh, and Jojo's Bizarre Adventure, originated in Shonen Jump.

A monthly American edition of Shonen Jump premiered in November 2002. Its popularity could mean a US release for Jump Super Stars, perhaps in a modified version that features the Shonen Jump manga currently running in the US edition of the magazine.